Digital is ready to change everything with a promise to reinvent your industry as you know it. Simply put, it will redefine business models. Today, digital giants are blazing a trail of growth to prove their prowess.

Search engine giant Google is foraying into payments, operating systems, social networking, communications, and automobile segment. China’s e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba is making inroads into finance, payments, cloud and online insurance industry. The app-based tax aggregator Uber is reimaging urban transportation with on-demand air transport with flying cars besides sniffing for long-term business opportunities in food delivery. Electric car major Tesla is muscling its way into battery storage and solar panels. Taking a cue from the futuristic organizations in the business ecosystem, software behemoth Microsoft is limbering up for the cloud and mobile race.

Not for nothing is it said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. These forward-thinking organizations are disrupting themselves to avoid getting disrupted.

In a feature with ETCIO, VS Parthasarathy, Group CIO & Group CFO, Mahindra & Mahindra discusses the strategic roadmap for digital business transformation

Digital is the way to business developmentThe future of digital business is ICE- Innovation and Adaptability, Climate Change and Experiential Commerce. This is an S curve of epic nature and those who are able to look at these three dimensions will survive and thrive in the digital era.

The pace of change is dramatic. So the best way to outpace, outmaneuver and outthink disruption is to unleash the power of strategic partnership, new business model, digital technology, value creation, customer focus, platforms and shared services.

“Strategic partnership will play a key role in the digital era. Collaboration and alliances in the digital era will define and defy conventional logic. So organizations should foster a “collaboration first” culture internally across business units. They should make 360-degree alliances with industry players and policy makers. They should harness industry-wide best practices and lessons from failure,” says VS Parthasarathy, Group CIO & Group CFO, Mahindra & Mahindra.

Organizations should use shared platform to reduce the risk of technology adoption. They should create collaborative digital B2B platforms and harness technologies like cloud and open source.

Businesses will find themselves caught up in the whirlwind of change. But two factors will remain constant- customer and value. Businesses can no longer hinge on a fuzzy customer focus. In the digital era ownership of products and services will mean ownership of experience. We are entering an age of experiential commerce. In their quest to provide an experience- based product or service, organizations will strive to create business moments. Analytics of Everything which is an amalgamation of insights from people, process, business, machine and things will help enterprises create business moments.

“Value creation is at the heart of digital transformation. Companies can capitalize on digital to create new business models. Technology plays a definitive role in designing these business models. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have launched paradigm shifting innovation using technology,” he states.

Several organizations are thriving on open innovation by crowdsourcing ideas from within and outside. Some are creating corporate garage within their organization. Whatever approach organizations take to digital they need to ensure that their business model is based on B2C (Built to Change) IT systems.

ABCD- the lingua franca of digital businessAnalytics, biometrics, cloud and digital are the building blocks of a digital business.

The next generation analytics will be a heady mixture of cloud, Internet of Everything, AI, machine learning, data mining and predictive modeling.

“An analytics-driven business culture enterprises will have to make insights a way of life. An insight a day keeps the blues of disruption away. Organizations should get an insight every day to help them disrupt themselves before someone disrupts their business,” Parthasarathy outlines.

Change from being in IT to BT is the biggest chasm that CIOs will have to cross. “If the ability to spearhead digital transformation comes through some other route then the CIOs will be destined to remain the data center manager. If you are slow to catch up CIOs will be out of the race,” he cautions.

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